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Monthly Chapter-73

Brave certainty rules in killing
Brave hesitation rules in living
These both either benefit or harm
Nature’s ruthlessness, who knows its cause.
Nature’s way never contending, yet adept in victory.
Never speaking, yet adept in answering
Never sent for, yet there from the beginning.
Indulgent, yet adept in planning
Nature’s net is vast and thin, yet never misses.

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Limits: Translations, even my nearly literal one above, invariably lose some of the ancient ‘original intention’ due to the modern cultural context we bring to our language’s words… our ‘education’. Studying the Word-for-Word translation of the Chinese character’s many synonym-like meanings helps mitigate this. (Click graphic at right for on-line Word-for-Word.)

Third Pass: Chapter of the Month12/1/2015

Corrections?

Not a correction to be found. Oh shucks…

Reflections:

The line, Indulgent, yet adept in planning, brought it home for me today. Balance is the message I saw. Nature is nothing if not the active process of balancing. I see nature as an active process because it never reaches the ultimate, ‘perfect’ balance. That is, ‘perfect’ as beheld in the eyes of the human-centric ideal anyway. Yep, nature just doesn’t sit still long enough to suit our sensibilities. It is always changing. 😉 I suppose the yin-yang circle is as good a model as any of that natural flow. Dropping my human-centric ideal of balance for a moment allows me to feel a sort of meta-balance. (Correlations are really the best way I’ve found to delve into this ‘outside the box’ view.)

The problem I have with every translation I’ve seen is that they always succumb to human-centric ideals at some point. That is certainly not surprising; indeed, it is perfectly natural. Biology compels us to project our preferences onto reality. The beauty of the original Chinese lies in how deftly it avoids that. It’s brevity must play a large role in this, although that succinct and simple portrayal makes it difficult to understand. Why? That portrayal offers few detours for the mind to ‘have it both ways’. The solution: interpret it — more words — to say what we want to hear.

The first four lines are good examples. Compare these with D.C. Lau’s translation… one of the best I might add.

Word for Word

Brave certainty rules in killing
Brave hesitation rules in living
These both either benefit or harm
Nature’s ruthlessness, who knows its cause.

D.C. Lau

He who is fearless in being bold will meet with his death;
He who is fearless in being timid will stay alive.
Of the two, one leads to good, the other to harm.
Heaven hates what it hates, Who knows the reason why?

Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult.

First, notice how D.C. Lau adds an extra line about the sage treating some things as difficult. That is good counsel, albeit an unnecessary extra. Perhaps he felt it essential given his translation of line 4:Heaven hates what it hates. By the way, line 4 is a good example of where translating begins to turn into interpreting.

More telling is D.C. Lau’s line 3:Of the two, one leads to good, the other to harm. This portrays our innate humanist ideal that beneficial is better than harmful. Naturally, we all have that biological bias. Another bio-hoodwink, as I call it where impartiality is understandably absent. However, without impartiality, a Taoist view is not viable and nearly rising beyond oneself is out of the question.

The original presents a more accurate picture of reality. Everything swings between benefit and harmful. Indeed, even those qualities are projected from the needs and fears of the observer. For example, a fisherman who succeeds feels benefit, yet the fish he hooks feels harm. Brave certainty rules in killing; Brave hesitation rules in living. Whether the result is beneficial or harmful depends on the observer and the circumstances.

Impartiality is crucial if one wishes to see reality (nature) as it truly is. The literal original maintains that neutrality best. Compare these excerpts from Word for Word and D.C. Lau.

Woe to him who wilfully innovates, While ignorant of the constant,
But should one act from knowledge of the constant, One’s action will lead to impartiality,
Impartiality to kingliness, Kingliness to heaven,
Heaven to the way,
The way to perpetuity, And to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger

Note: My point here is not to denigrate D.C. Lau’s translation. After all, I made superb use of it for nearly 50 years, and I still love the way he translates some parts… his artistic license and all. It is just helpful to dig deeper sometimes.